Level Watch

WINNER OF THE 2026 INDIANA AUTHORS AWARD DEBUT CATEGORY

WINNER OF THE 2026 IPPY AWARD GOLD MEDAL IN POETRY

Based on her experience as a wilderness guide for women in a substance-abuse treatment program, Mary Ardery’s visceral debut is set deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. These narrative-lyric poems chronicle a labor both physically and emotionally intense: bearing witness to campfire confessions, facing uphill climbs and frigid rivers and wildfires, reckoning with relapses and overdoses. Here is a nuanced exploration of intoxication and recovery, the ways we share and manage pain, and how our personal histories can haunt us but also lead us down transformative paths. Firmly grounded in time and place, part record and part elegy, this is a book for those who have been affected by addiction and all who have ever sought solace or redemption in nature.